Hājjī Riżā

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Ḥājjī Riżā was a minor official during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I (1571–1629), one of the most important monarchs of the Ṣafavid dynasty in Iran. As such, he is symbolic of a number of other such officials who took it upon themselves, not necessarily with court approval, to persecute Jews. According to the Judeo-Persian chronicle Kitāb-i Anusī (The Book of a Forced Convert) by Bābāī ibn Luṭf , sometime in 1625 a wave of persecutions struck the Jewish community of Isfahan. It had formerly paid a yearly jizya (see Taxation; Dhimma) of forty tūmāns, but Ḥājjī Riżā, one of the stewards of th…